Loading a bus for export to Cuba: 1964

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Loading a bus for export to Cuba. This bus, being lowered onto the Heinrich Heine, was one of 450 that British Leyland had sold to Cuba. The sale and export defied the United States' embargo set in 1963 to isolate Cuba economically and commercially at the height of the 'Cuban Missile Crisis'. In October 1964 an East German ship carrying some of the Leyland buses to Cuba collided with a Japanese vessel in the Thames, ruining the buses. Controversial conspiracy theories surrounded the accident.